


Warm Memories

by anistarrose



Series: Forduary 2019 [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (specifically pertaining to martyrdom), Forduary, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Near-Death Experience, Stangst, Suicidal Thoughts, leaving a certain AU untagged so not to spoil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 04:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17697653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: Lost in an icy wasteland, Ford searches for shelter and finds nothing.





	Warm Memories

**Author's Note:**

> For Forduary Week 1: Comfort!
> 
> (You might be able to tell that I started this last week, during the great US Midwest Polar Vortex Apocalypse.)

There’s a sliver of exposed skin between Ford’s goggles and his hood — just one tiny gap that lets the ice-cold wind slip though, biting and stinging at his face until tears fill his eyes. He turns away from the direction of the strongest gusts, and unties the piece of cloth he’d wrapped over his mouth and nose, trying to adjust it — but his fingers have grown numb, and the wind tears the fabric out of his clumsy hands. 

The stinging spreads all across his face from the goggles down, and he struggles to refrain from licking his lips — it’s tempting to bring warmth to his face for even just a moment, but he knows it would only let more and more crystals of ice form in the end. He tries to raise an arm to cover his nose, but he has to lower it instantly in order to keep his balance in the wind. If he falls into a snowdrift, he’s afraid he’ll never be able to get up again.

Desperately, he scans the area for some form of shelter, even though he knows he won’t see anything. The wind practically lifts entire snowdrifts into the air, creating a void of eerie, all-consuming white, and his goggles are growing foggy too, making him even more blind to his surroundings. Though he’s afraid to know the answer, he can’t help but wonder how long it’ll be before his own tears freeze.

He takes a breath, and it feels like he inhales more snow than air. He coughs and spits, desperate to get the cold out of his throat and his lungs, but the moisture just splatters all over his face and solidifies in an instant, tracing frozen rivers down from his mouth to his chin.

He tries to take a step forward, but doesn’t feel anything — not even the lurch of falling forward into a snowdrift. He isn’t even sure if he’s even standing up, he realizes, or if he’s _already_ fallen down but been too numb to notice. His eyes, his ears, his sense of touch — all of them rendered useless by this roaring, numbing white void of a storm.

A distant, robotic-sounding voice in the back of his head rattles off symptoms of hypothermia:

_Loss of coordination. Dizziness. Weak pulse. Memory loss._

Ford takes — _tries_ — to take a breath.

_Shallow breathing._

_Loss of consciousness._

_Death._

There’s no denying it anymore.

_I am going to die here._

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to him. It’s a miracle he’s even survived so long beyond the portal in the first place — he’s been accepting this as inevitable for over a year now.

But some part of him — a foolish part of him, maybe, but also a part of that kept him kicking, fighting, _alive_ — has hoped that that inevitability would only come after confronting Bill again, after saving the universe from the demon he’d aided, after undoing his own worst mistake. He’s hoped for his death to be a noble sacrifice, a worthy trade for the safety he’d bring to the multiverse — not a slow fade to white in an unnamed wasteland, body doomed to be buried under snow and forgotten.

And only now does he let himself admit it, but another part of him has always hoped he wouldn’t die all alone. He doesn’t want to disappear forever into an empty white void, he doesn’t want to die without saying goodbye, without saying he was _sorry_ … 

“Stanley,” he whispers, “I… I didn’t…”

He can’t get the last few words out.

  
  
  
  


He can hear noises, but he doesn’t want to get up. It’s so _warm_ where he is, so wonderfully warm and comfortable, and he doesn’t want to shift his blankets around and let even one single joule’s worth of that warmth escape…

Wait, warmth? _Blankets?_ How… 

He opens his eyes, and takes a moment to recognize the crackling fire a few feet away from him. Some sort of kettle is suspended over it, spewing steam and a sweet, familiar scent that makes his mouth water. He can’t help but lick his chapped lips again, and they don’t freeze this time.

He looks down at his own body, relieved to find all his limbs seemingly intact and un-frostbitten. There are no blankets, but he _is_ draped in a new cloak that’s a bit thicker than his old one, and feels like it has a larger hood as well. He tries to curl and uncurl his fingers and is struck with a jolt of panic when he finds that he can’t, but when he lifts his hands up to look at them, he realizes why: his outer pair of gloves have been removed, but taped to the fingers of the inner pair are chemical hand warmer packs, each radiating a gentle heat that melts away the numbness.

He looks around the… house? No, it’s really more of a shed — just a few cushioned chairs and a table, a stone-ringed fire pit, and one lonely cabinet. The thin walls are made of a material that looks like normal wood, but must be _somehow_ different, because it seems to be insulating the little space much better than wood should be able to.

“Storm’s over,” a gruff voice announces from behind him, and he jumps. He’s about to make a break for the door when it continues:

“Hey there, buddy, don’t freak out. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have hauled your heavy ass half a mile out of a snowstorm.”

The speaker gives Ford a wide berth as he approaches the fire pit and removes the kettle. He looks like a human, albeit a human with odd fashion choices — his graying hair is pulled into a long, ragged ponytail, and despite being inside, he still wears a pair of goggles over his eyes. Strangest of all, he’s wearing Ford’s old cloak.

“Who exactly _are_ you?” Ford blurts out. He _wants_ to trust this stranger, he _wishes_ he could, but it would be just like Bill to try and to capture him alive just to gloat —

“I’m just a wanderer,” the man answers. “A lot like you, I’m guessing.”

The man’s words are fairly upbeat, but even with his eyes obscured, the frown that crosses his face lends a sad feeling to his words — a homesick feeling, maybe. But it disappears in an instant, and with a smile, he asks Ford: 

“So, you want hot chocolate?”

Any beverage could be poisoned or spiked with truth serum or who knows what, but Ford’s still craving all the warmth he can get, so he nods. The stranger pours him a mug, and then procures a small, transparent bag from his supply pack.

“Marshmallows?”

“Uh… no, thank you.”

“More for me, then.” The stranger dumps mini-marshmallows into a second cup until it’s about half full, and then uses hot chocolate to fill in the rest. Just looking at it makes Ford feel like puking, but he slips his hands out of the taped-up gloves and wraps them around the warm mug that he’s offered.

“Don’t spill it, okay? You can get chocolate in damn near every dimension, but you’d be surprised how much I have to pay for some half-decent milk from a normal Earth cow. This is good shit, and I don’t wanna waste it.”

Ford takes a sip. It really is good — and not just that, but _familiar_ , exactly the same as he remembers it tasting back home. Maybe it’s a little sweeter than he prefers, but the chocolate is rich and the milk gives it a creamy texture he didn’t realize he’d missed so much. It takes him back to the days before he was allowed to drink coffee, the winter days when he and Stanley would come inside after getting into a snowball fight and warm up with the hot chocolate Shermie would make them…

The stranger’s words finally sink in. “You’re from Earth?” Ford asks.

“Not your Earth,” the man tells him, surprising Ford with an almost eerie confidence. “But yeah, an Earth. And a pretty similar one to yours, I’m guessing.”

He picks up his mug and swirls it around a bit, as if waiting for the marshmallows to melt, and takes a sip.

“You didn’t leave your dimension too long ago, did you?” he asks.

“About a year and a half,” Ford answers. It might be _exactly_ a year and a half, for all he knows — every once in a while, he’ll forget whether he marked down the day or not, and by now he figures his count is only accurate to within about a month. “What about you?”

“Seventeen or eighteen years, lost track.” The man chuckles bitterly. “Honestly? I hope it’s eighteen. Gives me a better excuse for all the things I forgot.”

“Forgot?”

“Yeah, I just… forget the little things. Those little nice, warm memories, like… how bacon tastes. My first girlfriend’s phone number. The name of the one teacher I didn’t hate in middle school. The plot twist that got me hooked on that one comic I could never quite catch up on, no matter how much I would save up to buy the new issues —”

“The way the air smells right after it rains,” Ford blurts out. “I haven’t been to one dimension yet where it’s the same.”

For a moment the stranger is quiet and Ford thinks speaking up was a mistake, but then the man quietly adds: “That smell of oil when you give your car a tune up all on your own, and you make a mess but you’re so proud of learning how to do it yourself. Oil just doesn’t smell the same anywhere else, either.”

“The sound of coffee brewing. No one has coffee pots quite like Earth’s.”

“Complimentary bread at restaurants. How am I supposed to just eat a whole basket of bread and sneak out without paying when they don’t even give me complimentary bread?”

“The feeling of writing with a good quill pen.”

“The color of the bike I learned to ride on.”

“The name of the store I always bought jellybeans from as a kid.”

The stranger seems like he’s about to say something, but then he just looks down and rests his head in his hands. “Guess it happens sooner than I realized,” he finally murmurs. “I’m… I’m sorry, kid. I hope you find your way back soon. I wouldn’t wish this life I’m stuck with on anyone.” He adds something else under his breath, but it’s hard to make out.

Ford doesn’t know what to say. He has no idea how to comfort this man, not when his way of grappling with the same feelings has been to simply give up on ever getting home — and he’s not going to tell the man who saved his life that the only thing he’s really letting himself hope for is dying in a blaze of glory to take down the monster he helped create.

So he just replies: “Thank you for saving me. And for the hot chocolate.”

The stranger shrugs awkwardly. “If you’re feeling better, I guess… I guess we should probably go our separate ways and all soon. I’ve got what feels like half the multiverse after my ass, and I don’t wanna make you a target for them.”

“It must be the other half that’s after my ass,” Ford remarks, deadpan, and the stranger stifles a laugh.

“Yeah, and I we probably don’t want them joining forces or anything, do we? There’s a place where a bunch of portals pop up only about a mile south of here — you feeling good enough to use snowshoes?”

“I’ll be fine. Are you staying here?”

“No, I’m ditching this place too. Already been here for about a week, which is kinda pushing my luck as far as getting tracked down by space cops goes.”

“I assume you’ll want your coat back, then.” Ford starts pulling it off, but the stranger raises a hand.

“No, you keep mine and I’ll keep yours. Mine’s warmer and you look like you really need it, while I’ve got a bunch of layers under here.You should put your gloves back on, though — they’re drying out somewhere over here.”

He makes no comment on the numbers of fingers on the gloves as he rummages around, which should be a relief but just makes Ford uneasy instead. There’s no way the stranger hasn’t noticed by now, so why stay quiet? Even the most otherwise polite people, Ford has seen, have no reservations about blurting out their questions to him — so why not this man? He seems more genuinely well-intentioned than just about anyone Ford has met since the portal, but there’s also something off about him, something _different_ about him, that Ford just can’t put his finger on… 

The stranger tosses Ford the gloves and chugs the rest of his hot chocolate. 

“Start bundling up,” he says, wiping a pale brown moustache off of his face. “The wind’s gone, but it’s still cold as balls out there.”

He frowns, looking concerned. “You know, if you don’t feel up to it, we can wait. I’m sure no one’s gonna come and try to kill us if we sit around for another hour —”

“No, I’m ready,” Ford replies. “Let’s go.”

***

The hike is uneventful, with little conversation besides a brief discussion of favorite foods from Earth — bacon for the stranger, coffee for Ford — and then a slightly longer, more heated discussion about whether coffee counts as a food. When they reach the portal hub, it feels like they’ve arrived too quickly.

~~Ford’s going to miss having company.~~

“So. Guess this is it.” The stranger gives a quick look-over to a diamond-shaped rift that glows purple as it flickers open near him, and steps towards it so that he’s only a few feet away. “Stay safe, good luck, don’t do anything dumb — like I said, I hauled you out of a snowstorm, and I don’t want all that work to end up worthless ‘cause you get yourself killed ten seconds after you leave my sight.”

“I’ll try my best not to die. Thank you again, and…” Part of Ford wants to ask for a name, but he has a hunch he won’t get one, so instead he asks: “Do you want your snowshoes back?”

“Nah, keep ‘em. I just stole ‘em from a random stranger about a week ago — I’ve got no emotional attachment.”

“Alright, then I suppose this is goodbye…” As the man turns to leave, Ford fiddles with his cloak out of habit, pressing his fingers against the area that should conceal an interior pocket. He’s expecting to feel a stiff, rectangular piece of paper bending under his touch — but he doesn’t, because _of course_ , the stranger has it now, _how could I forget about_ — 

Desperately, he grabs the man’s wrist. “No, wait! I — I need my coat back!”

The stranger stops just inches from the portal and turns back around to look at Ford. “Seriously? This thing could close any second —”

“Just — please! I _need_ it! It’s — it’s something important to me!”

“You were fine with switching coats back at the cabin! What’s so important that —”

“It isn’t the actual coat,” Ford explains hurriedly. “It’s something in one of the pockets. I almost forgot about it, but… but _please_ , I really —”

The stranger slowly moves a hand under his coat, and towards the interior pocket positioned right over his heart. His expression goes completely blank as he pulls out a worn photograph and stares at it, eyes still obscured by goggles and completely unreadable —

“It’s… it’s me and my brother.” Ford can’t see the picture itself, but he’s brought it out of that same pocket on enough bleak, homesick days to have every detail committed to memory. “I’m sorry for making such a — such a fuss about it, but I’d really like it back, if you could…”

The stranger still doesn’t reply, though Ford can swear his hands are shaking. 

_Maybe… maybe he hasn’t seen any pictures of Earth in a long time? Or maybe he has a family of his own that it reminds him of?_

“Are — are you alright? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

The man finally returns the picture, pressing it into Ford’s hand — but before Ford can even breathe a sigh of relief, he’s pulled into a tight hug. Head resting over Ford’s shoulder, the stranger lets out a warm laugh, just as warm as the embrace — and not just warm, but _familiar_ , too.

“If I can survive this long,” the stranger assures him, “so can you.” He steps back, and gives Ford a wide smile. 

“Knock ‘em dead, Sixer.”

Ford’s no longer trapped in the hug, but he still can’t move. He can hardly breathe. 

“ _Stanley_?!”

He reaches out towards the parallel version of his twin, but Stan has already turned and stepped into the portal. He gives Ford a thumbs up as he flickers out of sight, and the gateway blinks closed after him, leaving Ford behind all alone —

No, not alone. He’s left behind with a pair of snowshoes, a coat, a picture… 

And a new reminder of what home feels like.

***

(Stan barely even sees the figure collapsing in the storm in the first place, and he very nearly decides not to help. For all he knows, it might be a bounty hunter — or even worse — and they might turn on him the second he brings them to safety. He’s already stuck around in this dimension for far too long — no matter how he looks at it, it’s just not worth the risk.

But when he turns the body over and sees his brother’s unconscious face staring back at him, just as young as it had been when they’d fought in ‘82 and turning blue from the cold, he’s so, _so_ thankful that he’s never been anything if not a gambler with an oversized heart.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments are appreciated as always!


End file.
